Perceived value, habit, and engagement in Chinese university students’ use of Himalaya FM

Modern mobile audio platforms provide groundbreaking methods to listen to digital content since these platforms now enjoy high popularity among users. The study focuses on identifying factors that lead Chinese university students to maintain Himalaya FM usage by conducting experiments about user-perceived value, engagement, and habit formation dynamics. A print questionnaire received 374 valid responses from Chinese university students participating in this survey. The authors confirmed their suggested hypotheses using SEM as their method for analysis after gathering research data. Chinese university students use Himalaya FM because functional, emotional, and social benefits lead to direct maintenance effects (? = 0.37, p < 0.001). Repeated audio and playlist usage enables users to develop service platform loyalty, making habit the most potent predictive variable (? = 0.42, p < 0.001). The platform achievements heavily depend on building platform commitment, made possible through their active features (? = 0.35, p < 0.001). Mobile audio application development teams and marketing professionals must implement research findings in their work activities. Customers develop a better impression of the platform through exceptional content quality, personalized features, and interactive elements that realize persistent usage. Himalaya FM must develop AI-based recommendation systems with community and gamification features to remain the leading audio platform in the Chinese digital audio competition. The patterns of user retention and experiential components that modify mobile audio streaming platform retention behaviors are researched in original studies. Future research needs to combine investigations of mobile audio listening behavior and psychological, technological, and cultural aspects in human beings.